Author Archives

Beth Baker (née Jones)

Beth works at PLOS as Journal Media Manager. She read Natural Sciences, specializing in Pathology, at the University of Cambridge before joining PLOS in 2013. She feels fortunate to be able to read and write about the exciting new research published by PLOS.

Military veterans may have higher rates of death from the progressive neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neuron disease, than non-veterans. However, few studies have examined what might be behind this association. The authors of a…

The open source movement has facilitated the development of low cost and easy-to-use technologies for scientific settings. A study published in PLOS ONE describes the creation of a novel multi-fluorescence imaging system from readily available, low cost components. The study…

It would be hard to miss the public health messages informing us of the risks of alcohol. Still, some studies have suggested that light-to-moderate drinking could have a protective effect, at least for death from cardiovascular disease. Meanwhile, other research…

Tuberculosis remains a huge global problem. Diagnostic tests are imperfect, and it can be difficult for clinicians to weigh up their pros and cons to decide which to use. A PLOS Medicine article aims to simplify the decision by comparing…

No one likes injections, but most of us are glad to receive the many effective vaccines against infectious diseases such as measles and polio. In recent years, however, a growing anti-vaccine backlash has led to concerns over whether enough of…

For thousands of years, our immune systems evolved to fight off assaults from the local threats they encountered. We know that ancestral differences have left their mark in our genomes, but researchers are still investigating how that affects our lives…

When it comes to fungi, we usually think of mushrooms or baker’s yeast. But while these are useful, there’s a sinister side to the fungal kingdom. Fungal pathogens can severely impact agriculture and forestry, and global trade risks introducing new…

Acinetobacter baumannii is an opportunistic bacterium that takes advantage of patients’ weakened immune systems to cause pneumonia, wound infection and sepsis. A common cause of infection in veterans and other hospital patients (hence its nickname of “Iraqibacter”), multi-drug resistant strains…

Mosquito-borne viruses, including Zika, dengue and yellow fever, affect humans and animals and are huge killers globally. Mosquitoes have complex effects on disease transmission: the biting process appears to promote disease progression in ways that are not seen when mosquitoes…

Ants are unusual among animals because of their social behavior: living in huge colonies, cooperation is crucial as they tend young, build nests and forage. The authors of a new PLOS Computational Biology study were interested in how ants cooperate…